Call to amend Family Law: adoptees should gain access to birth and medical files
Activists urge lawmakers to allow adoptees access to original birth and medical files after they turn 18, citing around 90,000 affected people.
Civil activists in North Macedonia have renewed calls for changes to the Family Law so that adopted people can access their family and medical records after they turn 18. The campaigners say the current legal framework keeps information about biological origins locked away and leaves thousands searching for answers.
Campaigners point to human-rights obligations
Ilija Jovanović of the association Gradime idnina, who has led efforts for decades to open adoption files, says the problem affects a very large group. "According to his estimates, it is not isolated cases but an enormous number of about 90,000 people — adopted children, biological parents, but also brothers and sisters who are looking for one another," the initiative states.
Under current Macedonian law, information about biological parentage is treated as strict official secrecy, activists say, creating legal barriers for people who want to learn their origins. The initiative cites the European Convention on Human Rights and argues that knowledge of one’s origins falls under the right to private and family life.
Activists are asking lawmakers to simplify procedures and adopt models used elsewhere in Europe, where adoption files typically become available to the adoptee on reaching adulthood. They argue that clearer rules and predictable access would reduce the emotional and legal uncertainty many families face.
The campaigners also point to a range of European practices: in Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom, adopted people commonly have a legal right after age 18 to request their original birth certificate and medical records. Some countries use intermediary systems in which institutions first contact biological parents to request consent before personal data are disclosed.
Those behind the initiative urge authorities to begin drafting legislative amendments so that access to birth and medical files becomes a regulated right once adoptees turn 18, while also building safeguards — such as intermediary contacts — for biological relatives who may be approached.
Photo: press material from the event
